Entries Tagged 'Television' ↓

Wow, that's different. Right up there with Daughtry's elimination from American Idol comes this. Who went home this week, Marie? Jane? Nope.

Sabrina.

The Cheetah Girl.

The one that everybody pretty much had as a lock for the finale, if not to win the whole thing.

The big question is, what happened? How could they fall right off the list so quickly? Like Daughtry and other American Idol "sure things", did people just forget to vote for her because she was such a shoe-in? Or was there a deliberate backlash because it was becoming too lopsided? If you believe the whole show is fixed, did Disney pull the plug on their planted superstar because it was a little too obvious?

That's a real shame, she was easily the best dancer in the bunch. I just hope this doesn't mean that Mel is at the top of the heap now, she does nothing for me. The only reason I tolerate her is because Maksim has become more of a character than she is.

Taking a page straight out of a Seinfeld episode, Halle Berry offered a rather telling apology for a "Jewish slur" she said on the Tonight Show. They were doing one of those bits where they take pictures of her and use a computer to distort them, and when she came to one with a big nose she said "And this one is my Jewish cousin."

Yikes. 10 years ago we wouldn't have called that Jewish slur, we would have just called it a bad joke.

20 years ago, Don Rickles would have said the exact same thing and followed it up with "Just kidding, I love the Jews, my agent is Jewish" and he would have killed.

These days the audience is silent, the Tonight Show producers edit out the segment, and the star offers an apology the next day.

The funny thing about her apology, though, is that she claims she was simply repeating what had been said backstage by "the three Jewish girls that work for me." So Ms. Berry, in repeating the joke, forgot one of the cardinal rules of the ethnic joke – you can only tell jokes about the race/ethnicity/sexual orientation/religion that you personally belong to. Because if you're not, then you must have meant it in an offensive manner, you see. (Note sarcasm).

In other words, she could have told a black joke and the audience would have laughed. Or she could have had her people send out a press release stating that she's converting to Judaism. Both would have been ok.

Oh, the drama!

I've never liked Kim, I've mentioned that. I think she's mean to her team. And now they're abandoning her. I missed last week, but apparently she said something to Amy last week about not deserving to be here or some such. Either way, it upset Amy enough that when the rules became "You can train with whoever you want" she ran to Jillian. Apparently it didn't help her much, as her weight stayed the same.

The real drama, however, came when Neil, from the blue team, decided to cheat the system by bulking up before the weigh-in. He comes in at a +17, which causes Bob to drop a large number of F bombs in his direction. The plan, you see, is to deliberately put his team of 3 up for elimination so that the remaining blue players who are loyal to Neil will send somebody else home. Neil admits this, and laughs about it, which immediately makes him the enemy for the rest of his stay on the show.

It's at this point that I completely don't understand the game, as the other teams vote out Jez from the black team despite everyone acknowledging the Neil basically cheated the system. Well, here's hoping that Bob kicks some serious ass next week as he obviously wasn't in the "Let's rig the system" plan that blue came up with.

Finally a week where there's something to write about! Sorry I missed last week, but come on, the Red Sox are going to the World Series. I am morally obligated to watch baseball over ballroom. It's a Boston law.

This week was intriguing indeed! It started when I walked into the room and my wife said "Marie Osmond just passed out." Thank heaven for Tivo! It was a pretty standard faint, you can't really blame her. I bet the audience felt bad for laughing, thinking she was doing some sort of a stunt. Looking back at the fall during the results show you really got a feeling for just how fast she went down. Heather Mills commented that they thought it was a bit, and it was best fake faint she'd ever seen.

We're at a point now in the season where all the easy picks to go home have gone home. Well, almost. This week it should be Mark. And then Jane, Jennie, Marie and Cameron, leaving Mel, Cheetah girl and Helio to vie for the title.

This weeks's special guest star is Jennifer Lopez. If you're still wondering if she's pregnant, ask yourself why she wore a glorified beach cover-up for both of her numbers? Of course she is. Finally the show has a big enough star who just comes out and says "I'll sing." I didn't hear any plugs for a new album, and she did two classics rather than one classic and one new song that nobody's heard. I just wish that they'd stop with the backup dancers. It's a dancing show. You can sing all you want, but let the ballroom professionals dance while you do it.

Normally I fast forward through the pieces in between the results, but this week there was a good one – how each professional does their choreography. We learned that Edyta listens to her music 50 times, that Julianne goes to bed thinking about what she'll teach the next day, and that Max choreographs on the fly. Tony had the best quote when he said, "I'm just the frame, my partner is the picture." Sometimes in their effort to win you'll see pros who basically have their celebrity stand still while they dance circles around them. But the show's not about that, we all know that the pros can dance. The idea is to see what the celebrities can do.

In a funny moment, Julianne hears her name called during the results portion but has no idea if she's been told that she's safe or in the bottom two. So she sits there, looking vaguely confused, until Tom says "That means that in the bottom two are …" and finally she realizes that she's safe and celebrates.

No surprise, Mark goes home this week. Jane Seymour is also in the bottom two, which might be an indicator of what happens next week. She's good, but does she had the following? I say its her or Jennie Garth.

Congratulations and best wishes to Dr. Cox, aka John C. McGinley ("Johnny C") and his wife Nicole Kessler who announced recently that they're having a baby girl, due Feb 2. McGinley has a 10yr old son, Max, from a previous marriage.

Don't forget, Scrubs Final Season Premiere NEXT WEEK, October 25, 2007!

The results show has become such a pattern it's almost no fun to blog it anymore. They stretch it too far, and then just shove in a bunch of canned acts. This time we have Seal, who does "Kissed By A Rose" first while two professionals we don't know (I hate that, as I've mentioned) dance what is actually quite a nice number. Later he comes back, complete with backup dancers and playing his own guitar, to do the token song from his new album. Reminded me of Prince for some reason.

Then we have the obligatory ABC/Disney promotional segment, as Billy Ray Cyrus and his daughter come out to sing. Unlike a Drew Lachey who really seems to have embraced the show and makes regular appearances, Billy Ray pretty much never took his eyes off the microphone. He came, he sang, he left.

The only real suspense in the results show is who will be in the bottom two. Since the results are in no particular order, does it really matter at all who is safe first? Of course not. I would expect Wayne and Mark to be the lowest this week. Once you're down there, it's hard to fight out of it. But I'm surprised to see not Mark but Floyd the boxer. He's a classic case of not warming up to the audience. He thinks that if he concentrates hard enough and works on it and really puts everything he's got into it, he'll do well, and that's not how it works – at all. If you looked mad when you lose, the audience will drop off for you. Maybe his overhyping of his pay-per-view event had something to do with it? Who knows.

Doesn't matter, as Wayne goes home. His whole presence was entirely awkward, and I think Cheryl the two time champ knew it. She even had some comment in one of the segments about how during the complicated maneuvers she'd spin them so that she was closest to the judges. Nice. Even in the backstage segment Drew hit her with a question like "What character are you going to have Wayne in next week?" and she launched into what was clearly a pre-scripted speech about how wonderful of a guy he is. That made no sense.

Paso Doble next week, and I'll already make the prediction that Julianne (the champ) and Helio (race car man) get the highest score. Something about their style, combined with her choreography in what is a very character driven dance.

Last week they teased that the campus would be closing for a week, and I speculated that the contestants would have to live out in the real world and see what they've learned.

Almost. They actually all got a trip to a Jamaican resort, with their trainers. So it wasn't quite "real world", but the idea was still the same – deny the temptations, find some time to exercise, that sort of thing.

Jillian continued to beat on her team, taking them to a beach section to continue working in the sand (something they did during their first hidden weeks in the desert). Bob went the other way, and had some nice quality yoga time with his team. Kim may have had the best idea of all, getting her team in the pool. Nothing like working a large number of muscle groups while still giving the team the feeling that they get to relax.

The interesting philosophical question, though, came regarding the temptations. Jillian watched over her team like a hawk, telling them exactly what to eat and yelling at one of the players (Jez? is that how you spell it?) for even thinking about taking a drink. Her attitude was, "My goal is to keep all of my team here, you have the rest of your lives to drink. If you can't fight temptation for one week how are you ever going to do it in the real world?" Bob had a similar philosophy, though we did not see as much of it. Kim, however, went the opposite way – "You're adults, and if you want to drink, go ahead."

The challenge had the teams sitting out on a big raft and then one by one pulling themselves and each other back to shore. This one wasn't even close, as the black team made it all the way (on the shoulders of the little short twins with the low center of gravity), and the red and blue teams never even made it off the starting raft.

That's the only good news for black, however, as they come up the shortest in the weigh-in. This time it's actually red that wins the whole thing, so I think that pool strategy paid off. The team says that Jillian is visibly upset, but I think she's more upset at what she considers a personal defeat, rather than a sadness for whoever goes home. At this point the black team gets ugly, and the women immediately start scheming to break up the twins. "I don't want to go home, I can't do this by myself" one of them keeps saying. So Jim goes home. And in the "where are they now" segment he's lost so much weigh he looks like he might be sick, honestly. If I read the graphic right, he's lost a total of 123 pounds? And he did not start out as a big 400lb guy.

Next week…well, who cares. Blah blah, trainer goes over the line…they always sensationalize so we'll watch, but it's never really all that exciting.

In this corner we have Danny Bonaduce, who people of my age will remember as the little redhaired kid on the Patridge Family and who people of this generation will know as a raging alcoholic with violent tendencies. And in the other corner we have Johnny Fairplay, a man so annoying he makes the Dalai Lama want to punch him in the face. Fairplay's only contribution to society thus far was to trick the producers of Survivor Season 2 (it's in season 9 currently – that was 7 years ago people!) that his grandmother had died. He's basically been hanging around ever since.

It's probably worth mentioning that Danny, the guy with known violent tendencies? Is a trained martial artist. And Johnny, at half his size, basically stays on camera by being annoying.

So,guess who'd win in a fight?

Here's the context. Fairplay is on stage at some reality awards show, and people are booing. Danny wanders on stage, apparently because "someone in a headset" told him to, and says "They're booing you because they hate you." He then give him a friendly tap as if to say "There you go, I helped you with your bit, see ya" and walks away. Johnny, trying to make more of a bit out of it, runs at Danny and does what he calls his "monkey humping routine". If you've seen him do this, it was probably expected. But if you had no clue what he was doing, it probably came as something of a shock.

So, Danny just flips Johnny up and over his (Danny's) head, where Johnny lands on his face and smashes his teeth.

The question going around is, and I quote TMZ.com, "Who's the douche?" Fairplay already claims (from the hospital) to have pressed felony assault charges. Danny is doing the radio talk show circuit to defend himself.

The video really makes it pretty clear, and I think Danny was at fault. Don't get me wrong, I hate the other guy, and at least in theory he's the kind of guy you want to punch in the face. But when you actually see him thrown on his face by a guy twice his size, when all he was trying to do was get a laugh, you say "Well, wait, maybe he didn't deserve *that*." The biggest reason I think it's Danny's problem, though? Never once did he turn around and look to see if the guy was ok. No acknowledgement of "Damn I hurt him" or anything like that. He just played to the audience like he'd done what they wanted. He knew he hurt the guy (he watches Fairplay get up and walk offstage), and he didn't care. He smiled and shrugged. That's not really cool. I would think that even in a fight, if you put a guy on the ground, you have at least some concern about whether you've damaged the dude.

I have to admit, Dancing with the Stars is losing steam for me a little bit. I didn't even realize that it was on last night, we watched the Patriots game instead.  So we were happy enough with the recap.  We get it, the Cheetah girl and the race car driver are way out in front.  We actually tried watching Cavemen (blah) and Carpoolers (I liked, Kerry didn't) before Dancing, so that we could buffer it up and Tivo our way through it.

The encore dance goes to the race car driver, whose partner is Julianne, the champion.  I think that most of his points are coming from the crazy choreography she puts together.  She did that last season too, with Apolo.  Remember the whole dance around the chair?  And the blindfolded one?  She's good, I like her.

Queen Latifah is the guest star.  I wonder what it really says about your career when you basically put out an album of "standards"?  Instead of seeing the dancers we know this week, we see some champions.  They are good, sure, but who cares about them?  Part of the appeal of the show is in having your favorites, and wanting to see them.  When there's no one on stage you know, you reduce your audience down to just the people who watch for the ballroom, and that's not as many as you might think.

An actual funny bit with Jimmy Kimmel (I know, can you believe it?) when they go behind the scenes to look at how the votes are counted, and they discover that they're being counted by…well, The Count.  From Sesame Street.  They then completely kill the joke by having him counting votes for "Mel B" and "Scary Spice" independently, and when Jimmy says "You know those are the same person, right?"  the Count just says, "Are you serious?  Now I have to start over!" and they leave him picking up the phones again.  Haha?  I don't get it.

Albert the young model with the crotch action goes home this week.  I don't care about him one way or the other, had no idea who he was and I assume that fanbase did him in.  The other guy, Cameron, fills in the "hot guy" category apparently.  What bums me out is that his partner was Anna, the peppy little red head who only just came back this season.  I'd liked her in earlier seasons and was hoping to see more of her.  I have to see more of Cheryl Smith and Wayne Newton, but the one I like goes home.  Feh.

I was hoping that after the Blue team eliminated captain Jerry last week, Bob would tear them a new one.  I guess that's not part of the game, though, as it's never mentioned again.  Oh well. 

This week opens with a temptation…for the trainers.  That's a neat idea, as the three trainers stand in front of a tray of cupcakes in a possible chance to win a bonus for their team during the next challenge.  It turns out to be nothing more than a motivational trick, however, as each team says, "My trainer wouldn't want me to eat it, so I wouldn't wish the same on her."  Bob is the funniest, saying that he remembers when he had a cupcake – "half of one."  And then he's scoping out the whole tray, picking out his favorite.  But at the end, nobody picks any cupcakes, we don't get to watch the trainers pig out.

The challenge is a simple race to the flag and back, with two catches.  First, the teams have to bid each other down in a dare to see who can run it the fastest.  And second, the trainer runs with the team.  That was pretty neat, especially watching Jillian carry the flag (which was double her size) by herself, leading the team back up the hill.  Long story short, the black team fails to make their time, the red team succeeds, and the blue team never even got to go because they played the betting in order to dare the red team into taking the challenge.    This does not sit well with Bob, who feels that his team chickened out of even attempting the race, something that he would have gotten to participate in.  Needless to say, Bob beats on them pretty ruthlessly. 

Blatant plug in the middle for Subway, supposedly because they have a healthy menu and it was an example of how you can eat in the real world and still eat healthy.  But more obviously, it was paid product placement.

Worst of all for Bob, the winning red team gets immunity at the weigh in, so it's either going to be black or blue.  And Jillian's team pulls down substantial, double-digit numbers.  Someone from blue is going home again.  The team then totally disappoints as they say "We can't decide who to send home, so we're going to deliberately make it a tie and let the house decide."  To which Bob says, deservedly, "Oh hell no, I forbid that."

So at the end of it all Patty goes home – she's the one who pigged out unnecessarily last week during the challenge and probably should have gone last week.  We leave on a cliffhanger, as Allison tells us that next week the campus is closed.  I assume that means that they are going to have to spend a week in the real world, getting themselves to the gym and eating on their own, which would be pretty cool, but no idea how they would film it.  These shows thrive on the interaction between the players.  We shall see.